November 04, 2018

The People of the Caravan are Not our Enemies - Fr. Kenneth Tanner

The political left has agendas with the Central American caravan. The political right has agendas with the Central American caravan.

Walking with Christ is about abandoning false allegiances to ideological agendas for the reality of sharing in human suffering, in order to bring food and companionship, to clothe and welcome, to sacrifice for the sake of love.

The Christian perspective begins with God’s love for the world and for all persons revealed in Jesus, the God who is human.

It’s a hard and resilient kind of love that makes no distinctions based on borders or skin color or wealth or skill or usefulness or language or beliefs or, frankly, safety.

I want to change the conversation.

These people are not our enemies. These people are not pawns in a political cycle.

Our present government may decide they are enemies, that they will bring us economic or cultural or military harm.

Those who oppose our present government might find them a convenient foil for their opposition, but Christians cannot start in either of these places.

I am concerned that those who follow Christ as Lord not be manipulated into thinking of these people as enemies or as leverage in the midterms before we ponder their actual human situation.

I’m concerned with the condition of our hearts toward the predicament of people made in the image of God.

I want to sow the seeds of kindness into a conversation that’s compelling us to see this mass of people as the enemy, as a threat to our way of life, or as political currency in the hands of either “side.”

Jesus never functions from an economics of scarcity but from his Father’s abundance. He also does not allow us to “other” fellow humans.

He does not allow us to use people. Ever.

I want us to treat the caravan as fellow humans with compassion and not assume as true wild conspiracies about what’s brought them to our border.

What’s brought them to our border is tyranny and chaos and poverty at home. Poor people don’t leave their homes and ancestral communities and ways of life and make arduous journeys because all is well where they live.

I’m not a partisan on this. I am not advocating for particular solutions but as a pastor, I am reminding myself and others about the proper orientation of our hearts.

As in the Middle East, when you have an extreme humanitarian crisis, people flock to more peaceful and prosperous countries.

But these people are not our enemy, and they are not fodder for our political conflicts, whatever you believe about how they ended up on this journey.

Christians are tempted under the influence of broadcast media and political partisans to turn these suffering humans into a political argument.

As Christians our first duty is to love them, to see them in their actual plight, whatever our politics.

Our government may choose to do things that don’t constitute acts of charity toward these humans. We should resist that not only with our hearts but with our words of life and with peace-bearing acts of love.

That doesn’t mean that the political solution is to assimilate the convoy but I want to resist how our present politics frames these suffering people as enemies or as instruments of partisan rancor.

Maybe they are the enemies of someone whose highest aspiration is the protection of “our way of life” but this cannot be the highest aspiration of a disciple of Christ.

I am not saying this was without politics. I am saying that Christ is with the poor. Christ is with the caravan.

Let us be clearer: Christ is the caravan, fleeing tyranny and murder. The one who was once a refugee in Egypt is once more a refugee in these his poor.

Jesus is not available to prove my point, to settle my score, to underwrite my human notions of justice, to defeat the humans that oppose my life or view of things.

Now substitute my for your.

Jesus is the point and the score and the justice and he loves all humans without distinction and without measure.